Identification of colonial economic heritage in the southern part of Vietnam

Abstract

As the first mass of land in Vietnam becoming a French colony, Nam Ky – the Southern part of Vietnam (currently renamed Nam Bo – the South of Vietnam) was affected, earliest and hardest, by the consequences of colonialism. Brutal governance mechanism; plundering ruses to fully exploit profit; policies of enslavement, for obscurantism, and cultural intoxication; etc. are all sinful acts and evil nature of colonialism which the Vietnamese people as well as the entire advanced humankind have fought against and eradicated. However, it would be full of prejudices, non-objective and one-sided to totally deny important impacts for the evolutional process of the nation’s history in a number of economic sectors that the colonial exploitation has brought, if temporarily excluding its driving force and purpose. Therefore, study of the process, characteristics and consequences of the policy to exploit colonies in the Southern part of Vietnam is to contribute to sound recognition of historical heritages during colonial times, also to better understand our socio-economic starting point 100 years, more or less, ago; so as to reach proper selection and inheritance in the mission of fostering industrialization and modernization for and towards today’s sustainable development strategy.